COMMENT Kennedy: Liberal loser of the senate
By Muhammad Cohen
HONG KONG - Senator Ted Kennedy, who died this week aged 77, was the champion
of the left during the greatest surge to the right in United States political
history. Rather than the liberal lion of the senate fiercely defending his
turf, he was a lamb who failed to stop and even abetted the country's seismic
shift away from his principals and ideals. The very word liberal transformed
from an adjective to an accusation while Kennedy was the keeper of its flame.
I don't make these charges as one of the legion of Kennedy haters. Quite the
contrary: I'm a proud, card-carrying liberal. My
"To Sail Against the Wind" poster, a campaign contribution keepsake from
Kennedy's one and only presidential run in 1980, showing the senator stoutly
striding to his left, has graced my wall on three continents. I would have
voted for Kennedy instead of any presidential candidate of the past 40 years,
so count me as a true believer.
I don't blame Kennedy for that 1980 run against Jimmy Carter, a sitting
president of his own party. I don't even blame Kennedy, though many do, for
Carter's subsequent defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan. In 1979, Carter
threatened, "If Kennedy runs, I'll whip his ass." Kennedy let him, and that's
unforgivable. Though friends and foes alike salute Kennedy's legislative
record, those bills are mere footnotes to the dominant trend of the past 40
years. The Americans With Disabilities Act, No Children Left Behind and the
Occupational Safety and Health Act don't stack up to a single Clarence Thomas
or Rush Limbaugh that Kennedy helped create. In an era when liberals lost every
battle that mattered, Kennedy was the movement's poster boy.
Kennedy didn't just fail to stem the rightward tide, he helped power it.
Through his own personal misconduct, from cheating at Harvard to Chappaquiddick
to his binge with William Kennedy Smith of the blue-dot rape trial, Kennedy
exemplified the privileged, irresponsibility that fueled the rightwing
revolution.
Magical name
The Kennedy name was said to be magical among liberals, but it became even more
effective for conservatives. The mere mention of Ted Kennedy on any issue was
enough to open rightwing wallets. For every dollar Kennedy raised for causes he
supported, his name probably raised 10 times as much for causes he opposed.
Portraying himself as a champion of the working class, Kennedy simultaneously
financed the movement that convinced millions of Joe the Plumbers to vote
against their own interests.
While he became a powerful symbol for the right of everything that was wrong
with government, liberals, Democrats and Washington, Kennedy failed to use his
iconic position to inspire and move his allies. He was the one liberal
politician of his time guaranteed a national audience whenever he spoke out.
But Kennedy rarely chose to take that big stage to galvanize his side and move
public opinion on key issues that defined the US over the past four decades.
Where was he on George Bush I's Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas,
the rightwing extremist whose lifetime appointment to the court will have a far
greater impact than Kennedy and his brothers combined? When Thomas' 1991
confirmation hearings deteriorated into a circus with pubic hair on soda cans
in the center ring, where was Kennedy to tell the president and the country
that it had to demand someone better? Actually, Kennedy was right there on the
Senate Judiciary Committee, gagged by his own string of peccadilloes.
Bushwhacked
When Thomas cast the vote that made George W Bush president, where was Kennedy
to say it was wrong in a democracy for nine judges to order vote-counting
stopped? Where was Kennedy to express liberal outrage at this sham and to lead
a movement to refuse to recognize Bush as president until the votes were
counted? Why wasn't he calling on fellow lawmakers to stand and turn their
backs whenever they were confronted with this immorally appointed president?
Well, Kennedy was too busy then crafting the flawed and under-funded No
Children Left Behind Act that not only made public education less effective but
gave the sham president legitimacy. After asserting Bush betrayed him, Kennedy
went back to work again with that same administration on prescription drug
coverage for seniors, only to see his support used to create government
handouts for drug companies. The guy just didn't learn.
Where was Kennedy's call for liberals to march to protest the invasion of Iraq?
Where was he on the erosion of civil liberties under George W Bush? Where was
he over the past 40 years on taking meaningful steps to end America's
dependence on imported oil and stop fouling the planet?
Most important, where was Kennedy on the decades-long slide starting with
Reagan that transformed the government's mandate and public opinion about the
very mission of America. Kennedy's silence was deafening as Republicans and
Democrats alike pandered to business and cut taxes on the wealthy, mocking his
brother John's clarion call in his inaugural speech, "Ask not what your country
can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
Go ask Al
It's deeply ironic that Kennedy dies in the midst of a national firestorm over
healthcare reform, the issue that he hoped to make his crowning achievement. He
leaves the issues mired in the lies and muddle that he allowed to spread and
poison the national debate. Senior citizens with their social security benefits
and Medicare cards stand up at town hall meetings today demanding, "Keep
government's hands off me and my healthcare," not only because of Fox News and
rightwing radio, but because Ted Kennedy refused his mantle to refute the noise
and nonsense on the right, leaving it instead to the likes of Al Franken.
Kennedy eschewed that national spotlight to become the consummate Capitol Hill
insider. His accomplishments, while noteworthy and substantial, did nothing to
counteract the nation's lurch to the right. He chose to work in the
comfortable, clubby confines of senate while his team desperately needed a
public leader. Perhaps, given the times and trends (though with Watergate,
Reagan and his hoodlums, Iraq and Katrina, the Democrats certainly have had
some cards to play), Kennedy drew a Mission Impossible; but unlike the TV and
movie versions, Kennedy chose not to accept it.
Renowned as an orator, it's fitting that Kennedy's best known words have come
in tragedy and defeat. There's this beautiful tribute in the eulogy for Robert
Kennedy: "As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he
touched and who sought to touch him: 'Some men see things as they are and say
why. I dream things that never were and say, why not'?"
After Carter whipped his ass, Kennedy told the 1980 Democratic National
Convention, "The work goes on, the cause endures, the dream will never die." In
his electrifying appearance at last year's Democratic Party convention, the
stricken Kennedy, whose early support helped Barack Obama secure the
presidential nomination, said, "The work begins anew, the hope rises anew, the
dream lives on."
Because of Kennedy's own failures and flaws, so much of what he stood for
remains nothing more than a dream.
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America’s story to the
world as a US diplomat and is author of
Hong Kong On Air,
a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal,
financial crisis, and cheap lingerie. Follow
Muhammad Cohen’s blog for more on the media and Asia, his adopted home.
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